Rouen Cathedrals, Roy Lichtenstein, 1968

I have always loved Monet's obsession with light and his series of paintings that are not nature, but rather buildings, are something that I have always enjoyed.  I have postcards of two of them up in my office, I like them so much.  I was unfamiliar with Lichtenstein's riff on this theme until I saw this at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany recently.
Roy Lichtenstein saw photographs of Monet’s Rouen Cathedrals, which inspired the young pop artist to create what he called “manufactured Monets.” While Monet’s repetition seemingly reaffirms the individuality and uniqueness of Rouen Cathedral, Lichtenstein’s Cathedrals, broken into democratizing dots and binary color schemes, mechanize this subject matter. Lichtenstein’s appropriation delved into the nature of repetition and seriality by taking an iconic image, by then cheapened by overexposure and popularity, and reinvesting it with renewed, ironic vigor and relevancy. Yet, for both artists, the subject is less important than the act of seeing, and it is precisely this obsession with sight that this brings to light (so to speak). I read that they have been exhibited together, but I have seen them separately.